ertie received the next day his
first invitation to dine out. He read the little note through three
times in order fully to take in its contents, and then went around the
rest of the day in deep abstraction as though he was trying to decide
some very important question. It was with the same expression that he
opened the door at home in the evening. His aunt was stirring some
oatmeal mush on the stove.

"Is that you, Bert?" She spoke sharply. She always spoke sharply, even
when not intending it; it had grown to be a habit.

"Yes'm," said Bertie meekly, as he hung up his cap.

"I s'pose you've only got one day more at the store," said Mrs. Ross.
"Sampson didn't say anything about keeping you longer, did he?"

"No. He said he couldn't--I asked him."

"Well, I didn't expect he would. You'll have a holiday on New Year's
anyhow; whether you'll have anything to eat or not is a different
question."

"I've an invitation to dinner," said Bertie timidly, "me and William
John. It's from Doctor Forbes's little girls--the ones that gave me
the mittens."

He handed her the little note, and Mrs. Ross stooped down and read it
by the fitful gleam of light which came from the cracked stove.

"Well, you can please yourself," she said as she handed it back, "but
William John couldn't go if he had ten invitations. He caught cold
coasting yesterday. I told him he would, but he was bound to go, and
now he's laid up for a week. Listen to him barking in the bedroom
there."

"Well, then, I won't go either," said Bertie with a sigh, it might be
of relief, or it might be of disappointment. "I wouldn't go there all
alone."

"You're a goose!" said his aunt. "They wouldn't eat you. But as I
said, please yourself. Anyhow, hold your tongue about it to William
John, or you'll have him crying and bawling to go too."

The caution came too late. William John had already heard it, and when
his mother went in to rub his chest with liniment, she found him with
the ragged quilt over his head crying.

"Come, William John, I want to rub you."

"I don't want to be rubbed--g'way," sobbed William John. "I heard you
out there--you needn't think I didn't. Bertie's going to Doctor
Forbes's to dinner and I can't go."

"Well, you've only yourself to thank for it," returned his mother. "If
you hadn't persisted in going out coasting yesterday when I wanted you
to stay in, you'd have been able to go to Doctor Forbes's. Little boys
who won't do as they're